ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Psychology 101, UKZN

2008
M.J. Kometsi,
M.A. (Clin.Psych.)(UCT)

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Reference:
 Robbins, S.P. & Judge, T.A. (2007).
Organizational Behavior (12th Ed.).
Prentice Hall: New Jersey.
Chapter 1
 Reserved copies under Psych 304
Notes

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What Managers Do
 Make decisions, allocate resources &
direct activities of others to attain
goals
 Work in an organization
 Consciously coordinated social unit,
composed of 2 or more people, that
functions on a relatively continuous
basis to achieve a common goal or set of
goals
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Management Functions
 Planning: defining organizational goals
& establishing strategy for achieving
them
 Organizing: design organization’s
structure
 Leading: direct and coordinate
employees
 Controlling: ensure things are going as
they should
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Management Roles
 Henry Mintzberg’s (1960) study
 Interpersonal
 Informational
 Decisional
 Exhibit 1-1 (pp-6)

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Management Skills
 Robert Katz- 3 essential
management skills
 Technical Skills: ability to apply
specialized knowledge or expertise
 Human Skills: work with, understand,
motivate employees
 Conceptual Skills: mental ability to
analyze & diagnose complex situations

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Organizational Behaviour
(OB)
 Studies 3 determinants of behaviour in
org. (individuals, groups & structure)
 Apply this knowledge to improve org’s
effectiveness
 The study of what people do in an
organization & how their behaviour
affects the organization’s performance

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Contributing Disciplines to OB
field
 Psychology: seeks to measure,
explain & sometimes change
behaviour
 Learning & personality theorists,
counselling, Ind/Org Psych
 Social psychology: people’s
influence on one another
 Attitudes, communication patterns,
group behaviour & conflict
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Contributing Disciplines to OB field
(cont…)

 Sociology: people in relation to their

social environment & culture
 Group behaviour in organizations
 Anthropology: study societies to
learn about human beings & their
activities
 Differences in values, attitudes &
behaviour btwn people in diff. countries &
within diff. org.

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Challenges & Opportunities for
OB
 Responding to Globalization:
 Org. no longer constrained by
national borders
 Increased Foreign Assignments
 Workforce is likely to be different
 Overseeing movement of jobs to
countries with low-cost labour
 Economic values aren’t universally
transferable
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 Coping with anticapitalism backlash
 Compete against cheap labour
 Criticism from labour groups, politicians
 Managing people during the war on terror
 business travellers cut on their trips
 Managing workforce diversity
 Heterogeneous mix- gender, age, race, sexual
orientation

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 Working with people from different
cultures
 Embracing diversity
 Diverse cultural values, lifestyle
preferences
 Orgs. need to be accommodating

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Implications
 Improving quality & productivity
 Industries suffer from excess supply
 Translates into increased competition
 Responding to labour shortage
 Decline interest by older workers to
stay in workforce
 Need for sophisticated recruitment &
retention strategies
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 Improving customer service
 Need for interaction with customers
 ? Please customers
 Improving people skills
 Empowering people
 Decision making
 Stimulating innovation & change
 flexibility
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 Coping with ‘temporaries’
 Jobs are being subcontracted out
 Job security?
 Working in networked organizations
 Networked organization
 Helping people balance work & life
 Gone are 8am to 4pm shifts
 Creates personal conflicts & stress

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 Improving ethical behaviour
 Pressure on productivity & tough
competition
 Break rules
 Ethical dilemmas
 Codes of ethics
 Workshops/seminars to improve ethical
behaviour

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Coming Attractions: Developing
an OB model
 A model is an abstraction of reality
 A simplified representation of some real
world phenomenon
 3 levels of analysis in OB
 Individual
 Group
 Organizational system

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The Dependent Variables
 A dependent variable: key factor to
be explained or predicted & is
affected by some other factors
 Productivity: transferring inputs to
outputs at lowest cost

? Concern re: effectiveness & efficiency
 Absenteeism: failure to report to work
 Cost implications, delays decision
 Are all absences bad?

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 Turnover: voluntary/involuntary
withdrawal from an organization
 Increased recruiting, selection & training
costs
 Can be positive
 Deviant workplace behaviour

Voluntarily violating organizational norms
 Understand why?

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 Organizational citizenship behaviour
(OCB)
 Behaviour not part of formal job
requirement, but promotes effective
functioning of the org.
 Job satisfaction: positive feeling about
one’s job
 Affects productivity
 Jobs must be intrinsically challenging &
rewarding

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The Independent Variables
 An independent variable cause some
change in/on/to the dependent variable
 Individual-level variables: individual
characteristics that will influence behaviour
at work
 Age, gender, marital status, values, attitudes,
perception, decision making, learning, motivation

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 Group-level variables: more than the
sum total of all individuals acting on
their own way
 People behave differently in groups
 Understand group influence on
individuals
 Degree to which group members are
attracted to each other

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 Organizational systems level
variables:
 The design of the formal organization
 Organization’s internal culture
 Human resource policies & practices

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